


Prince of Darkness

by Philosopher_King



Series: 666-follower Satanic-themed fic giveaway [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Casket of Ancient Winters, Gen, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Lightbringer Loki, Loki as Lucifer, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: "After Odin fell into the Sleep, Loki kept going back to the Vault every few hours to stand before the plinth where the Casket of Ancient Winters lay. Like a guilty man returning to the scene of the crime. But what was the crime, he wondered, and whose? Loki’s driving his father past the brink of exhaustion by confronting him with the truth? Or Odin’s abandoning his son when he most needed his father's guidance? Or was it earlier: the lie he had told Loki for his whole life only to reveal the truth in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and then escape taking responsibility for the aftermath? ..."He saved my life, Loki reminded himself; I would have died if he hadn't taken me. But was that even true? Could he believe Odin’s word about anything, now? Was he a rescued castoff or a hostage? ... Loki was starved for knowledge, and he knew he would not get it from Odin. Nor could he expect truth from his mother, from Frigga: Odin might well have told her the same lies. No, there was only one person he could ask: Laufey himself. As a king to another king, Laufey owed him the courtesy of truth."





	1. Paradise Lost

**Author's Note:**

> shine-of-asgard on Tumblr won this fic in my 666-follower Satan-themed giveaway. Here was the prompt: "Loki/Lucifer and Odin/God. Variation of the 'Lightbringer' theme where Loki rebels against Odin and tries to steal the Casket of Winters to give it back to the Jotnar. It can follow the 'biblical' version with Odin striking Loki down and Loki falling from Asgard or you can spin it any other the way you want. Bonus points for the appearance of Thor as a conflicted good archangel who loves his brother but won't go against God for him."
> 
> The giveaway fics were supposed to be 1000-2000 words. Yeah, that did not happen.

After Odin fell into the Sleep, Loki kept going back to the Vault every few hours to stand before the plinth where the Casket of Ancient Winters lay. _Like a guilty man returning to the scene of the crime._ But what was the crime, he wondered, and whose? Loki’s driving his father past the brink of exhaustion by confronting him with the truth? Or Odin’s abandoning his son when he most needed his father’s guidance? Or was it earlier: the lie he had told Loki for his whole life only to reveal the truth in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and then escape taking responsibility for the aftermath? _Couldn’t he have thought of another lie?_ Any story, any explanation other than the truth that Loki had already guessed?

_The Casket wasn’t the only thing you took from Jötunheim that day._

Loki felt a strange kinship with the Casket—like it was a long-lost brother. Perhaps that was what kept drawing him back to it. _We don’t belong here, either of us._ Perhaps that had been the true crime: those twin thefts more than a thousand years ago.

 _He saved my life,_ Loki reminded himself; _I would have died if he hadn’t taken me._ But was that even true? Could he believe Odin’s word about anything, now? Was he a rescued castoff or a hostage? _I hoped we could unite our kingdoms one day—bring about an alliance, bring about a permanent peace—through you._ How would that have worked, if Laufey had never wanted him? And how could Odin know he was Laufey’s son, if he had been left alone to die?

Loki was starved for knowledge, and he knew he would not get it from Odin. Nor could he expect truth from his mother, from Frigga: Odin might well have told her the same lies. No, there was only one person he could ask: Laufey himself. As a king to another king, Laufey owed him the courtesy of truth.

Loki went through the secret path he had found deep beneath the palace; he did not want Heimdall to know of this trip. He emerged from a cave in the ice not far from the ruined palace where Laufey’s throne still stood, but had to trek some distance around to make sure that he approached openly, from the front: he did not wish to be apprehended as a spy or saboteur.

Laufey’s welcome was still far from warm: “Kill him,” he ordered his guards, sounding almost bored, as Loki walked toward the dais between the rows of towering ice pillars.

“After all I’ve done for you?” Loki said lightly; he was determined to show no fear, though his stomach twisted with it.

“So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.”

“That was just a bit of fun, really,” Loki said, adopting a cocky air, half-consciously deepening his voice to match the Frost Giant’s. “To ruin my brother’s big day. And to protect the Realm from his idiotic rule for a while longer.”

“I will hear you,” Laufey said slowly, grudgingly.

“What I have to say is… of a sensitive nature.”

“Only a fool would dismiss his guards in the presence of an enemy. Do you think me a fool?” Laufey’s tone was even, but his low growl held more than a hint of warning.

“I think you a king, in the presence of a fellow king.”

Laufey scoffed. “What, is Odin dead, along with his elder son?”

“Odin Sleeps and Thor is banished for his assault upon your Realm.”

“In which you were an accomplice.”

Loki bowed his head. “I tried to dissuade my brother from his bloody course, but you are right; I should not have assisted him. I hope to make amends for the damage we have done.”

“How?” Laufey asked bluntly.

“By returning the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

An excited murmur arose among the guards and attendants who lined what used to be the great hall. Laufey held up an impatient hand to silence them.

“You would pay us weregild with stolen coin?”

“With lawfully taken spoils of war,” Loki corrected. “Indeed, it would more than pay for the lives of a hundred men; with it you could restore Jötunheim to its former glory.” He struggled to say the word without irony.

“And what do you expect in return for this… excess of generosity?” Laufey asked, allowing irony to drip from every word.

“Only the answer to a question, which I would ask in private… or in the presence of only your most discreet, trusted men.”

“All of my men are discreet and trusted. Ask your question.”

Loki sighed; he hadn’t expected to be asking about his parentage in the presence of twenty hostile Frost Giants. He would have to go about this indirectly.

“If you will dismiss none of your men, then I ask that you answer three questions.”

“One or three, it matters not. But ask quickly; the dinner hour draws on.”

“And who knows what may happen when you let Jötnar get hungry enough,” said one especially hulking guard behind the throne, baring his teeth. The assembled Giants laughed; it seemed that they knew of the stories Aesir parents told their children to make them behave, or at least suspected.

“Peace, Byleistr,” Laufey said without heat. “Ask, Asgardian.”

“Did Odin take anything from you at the end of the war, other than the Casket?”

“Aside from the lives, freedom, and honor of my people?”

“Yes, aside from that. And something taken from you specifically.”

Laufey’s face darkened. “You dare to speak to me of my beloved Queen?”

Loki cursed himself silently; he had known that Queen Farbauti was killed in the fighting at the very end of the war. “No. Of… something she may have left behind.”

Laufey’s eyes narrowed. “It seems this ignorant Asgardian is of little threat to me,” he announced. “I will speak with him in my private chambers. My sons, Helblindi and Byleistr, will join me, and as guard I shall have only my esteemed warrioress Hvedra.”

Laufey stood abruptly from the throne and the two giants who had flanked it—his sons, apparently—followed him down the steps from the dais. The one who had not spoken, Helblindi, had a scar across his forehead and held one arm stiffly at his side. One of the giants who had been standing in the hall peeled away from her fellows, looking somewhat bewildered. Loki would not have identified her as a female had Laufey not called her “warrioress”; she looked much like her male companions, down to the bare chest, flat and muscular.

Loki followed the giants through a passageway behind the throne into another ice-cave, larger than the one he had come through and furnished with a long table and six chairs, all carved of ice. Other openings in the walls of the cave no doubt led to other chambers deeper in the glacier. Laufey sat at the head of the table and his sons took their places to either side. Hvedra remained standing, looking uncertain what to do, and so did Loki: all of the chairs were too large and slick for him to climb into unaided.

“Hvedra, would you assist our honored guest?” Laufey asked, noting Loki’s embarrassment.

Loki feared that the giantess would lift him by his armpits as if he were a child, but instead she knelt and made a bridge of her hands as if she were an Asgardian gallant helping a lady mount a horse. “Thank you, my lady,” Loki said once he was seated on the chair opposite Laufey’s. His legs dangled awkwardly and he could not make use of the backrest without reclining, so instead he held himself stiffly upright. The ice of the chair chilled him even through his cloak and thick leather trousers.

Once Hvedra had seated herself beside Byleistr, on Laufey’s left, Laufey spoke—but instead of addressing Loki, he turned to the giantess and said, “Hvedra, you saw when Alsvart was killed, did you not?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, looking only slightly less puzzled than before.

“And you told me that something strange happened before his death.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The Asgardian who killed him”—her eyes flickered briefly toward Loki before she turned back to her king—“Alsvart grabbed his wrist and tried to burn him with cold” (Loki could tell that the phrase in the All-Tongue translated a single Jötun word) “but he did not burn. Instead, his hand and arm turned blue and marked, like a Jötun’s.”

This Alsvart had not been able to burn Loki with cold, but it seemed Hvedra’s words could. He felt an echo of the same prickling numbness, the same disoriented nausea, that he had felt—could it have been only the day before?

“Is this the man who killed Alsvart?” Laufey asked, nodding toward Loki.

Hvedra turned and scrutinized his face. “It is hard to say for sure, they all look so similar… but he did have dark hair of about that length and wore a dark green coat. And he killed Alsvart with a dagger he pulled from the air.”

“Thank you, Hvedra.” Laufey turned burning eyes on Loki. “I would be mad to ask you to pull a dagger from the air… but can you summon something else?”

Loki was not sure it was wise to admit to having killed this Alsvart… but they already knew he had slain many of their brethren, and Laufey wanted him to prove that he was the one with the blue hand. So instead of a dagger he pulled a book from one of his pocket dimensions and tossed it onto the table.

Laufey nodded. Now he turned to Helblindi. “Burn his face with cold,” he commanded.

Stone-faced, Helblindi rose, still holding his arm stiff, and approached Loki, closing the distance swiftly with his long strides. Loki did not move; he only flinched a little when Helblindi grasped his jaw in one massive hand. He felt cold radiating from Helblindi’s fingers, but then warmth suffused his face, the same warmth that had washed over him when he had held the Casket.

Hvedra hissed in a sudden breath; “Well, fuck me,” muttered Byleistr. Laufey shot his son a reproving look. Helblindi withdrew his hand and Loki’s face could feel once more the chill of the frozen realm.

“You ask if my wife left anything behind at the end of the war,” Laufey began. “She did bear a child, the day before she was killed. I begged her not to rejoin the fighting so soon after, but… she was a warrior to the last.” Grief was written starkly in the haggard lines of his face.

“And the child?” Loki asked. He could hear his voice trembling, shameful as it was, and his face was so numb that it barely felt attached to the rest of his body.

“It was one of the small ones,” Laufey said. His voice sounded strangely flat. “She wanted to keep it, but the priests said it was sacrilege, and would call down the wrath of the gods. That we must keep to the old ways, especially in our hour of trial.”

 “The small ones,” Loki repeated. His own voice seemed to him to come from very far away.

“The old tales call them the children of the air and snow, who must be returned to air and snow. But I do not credit such superstition. Our people began leaving them to die as infants because otherwise they would have died as children; it saved them and their parents a few years of suffering. Perhaps we know enough now to allow them to survive to adulthood; apparently Asgard does. But ancient customs are slow to fade, even when they have lost their original purpose.”

Loki’s nausea seemed to have doubled. He abruptly realized how much he had been hoping that Odin had lied, that he had parents who loved and wanted him but were forced to give him up for the sake of peace…

“The priests fled the temple as the Asgardian army approached. Those that survived returned to find that the baby was gone: its body could not be burned, returned to the air as the gods demand. I killed the priests for their negligence and cowardice, and let the people think the Asgardians had slain them in the temple they served. I thought the Asgardians must have found the baby’s frozen corpse and disposed of it… but it seems I was wrong.”

“Odin told me I was your son,” Loki whispered hoarsely. “How did he know?”

“Your heritage lines. Odin doesn’t let it be widely known, but his mother was a Jötun: Bestla, my father’s sister. She was a shapeshifter, like you, so she spent most of her life in Aesir form… which made it easier, when relations between the realms turned hostile, to conceal the king’s kinship with the enemy. But Bestla must have taught her son to read the markings of her house, the royal house. He saw them on your face and he knew.”

 _Heritage lines?_ Loki had never known that the marks on the Jötnar’s skin had any more meaning than a tiger’s stripes. And he had known his grandmother’s name and even her face, from the murals on the walls of the throne room, but knew nothing of her true origin.

“Do you regret it?” Loki asked. His voice came out almost strangled.

Laufey gave a sharp derisive sigh. “You want me to say how remorseful I am for abandoning you. Sorry to disappoint you, boy. What would I have done with a sickly motherless runt? The realm was suffering; my people would have resented me for it, said the resources should be spent on worthier lives.” He paused. “I do regret that Odin got his hands on you.” His mouth twisted. “He styles himself ‘All-Father,’ father of all the Realms. ‘Father of Lies’ is a truer name for him. And he has turned you into a liar like himself. I should have slit your throat rather than let him take you.”

 _He has turned you into a liar like himself._ But how did Laufey know that? _“So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.”_ Of course. But in deceiving Odin (to show him the truth about Thor!), he had only been following Odin’s tutelage. _Father of Lies. I should have slit your throat._

Loki hardly felt attached to his own body: the sensations of stiffness, cold, and even nausea seemed to belong to someone else; the sound of Laufey’s voice seemed distant and hollow. All he could hear was his own heartbeat in his ears and he felt as though he was watching himself from within when he grasped a knife from its pocket dimension and threw it without aiming into Laufey’s throat.

All at once the world snapped back into vivid reality. Laufey’s eyes widened and he made a wet choking sound before he slumped back into his chair. Byleistr rose, so quickly that his chair fell with a clatter onto the floor, and started to lunge at Loki; Hvedra was only a little slower to do the same. Loki was debating whether to slide off the chair and shelter under it or try to climb onto it to hold them off, but the sound of Helblindi’s palm landing heavily on the table froze them all.

“Be still,” Helblindi said, unnecessarily.

“He murdered our father!”

“I have eyes,” Helblindi said. His flat tone never changed. He trained his eyes on Loki; there was no anger in them. “Speak well, Asgardian, and you may yet leave this room alive.”

“I alone can give you the Casket,” Loki began. He still felt too unreal to feel fear. His mind seemed clear and sharp as the blades of ice that still gleamed around Byleistr’s and Hvedra’s hands; a plan had taken shape as swiftly and easily as those blades.

“What stops us from invading Asgard in force and taking it?” Helblindi asked.

“You would not find it. I told you: I alone can give it to you.”

“And if we put you to slow torture, would you not hand it over?”

Loki laughed. “I am a magician matched by none but Queen Frigga herself. I can stop my own heart if I wish.” (He was lying, but he would bet they could not know that.) “And if I die, the Casket is out of your reach forever.”

“He’s bluffing,” Byleistr hissed. Loki was nervous until he added, “Asgardians love their lives too much.”

Helblindi’s eyes bored into Loki’s; Loki gazed back coolly. “I think perhaps this one does not,” Helblindi said. “Very well. Why should we not kill you _after_ you give us the Casket?”

“Because I know things about Asgard’s defenses that none but a member of the royal family would know. I will not only return the Casket to you; I will help you wage war on Asgard to avenge the honor of your Realm.”

“Why?” Helblindi, like his father, did not mince words. “Why attack your own kingdom? What do you want out of this?”

“Asgard is not my kingdom,” Loki said sharply.

“You are its king.”

“Temporarily.” Loki knew now that he was never meant to be more than that; he was still keeping the throne warm for Thor. _And much joy may he have of it._

“Do you think to buy the throne of Jötunheim with the Casket?” Byleistr demanded. “Or seize it?” He raised his bladed hand threateningly. Helblindi’s level gaze never left Loki’s face.

“Odin thought to install me as a puppet king,” Loki said, almost spitting out his so-called father’s name. That was what he had meant when he said that both Thor and Loki were born to be kings; that was the only way he could have united their kingdoms or brought about a permanent peace, given Laufey’s feelings about his third son. “This is not my kingdom either.”

“Then what do you want, Prince Loki?” Helblindi asked again, calm and inexorable.

“Midgard,” said Loki, almost on a whim.

“Midgard?” Byleistr repeated incredulously, and even Hvedra, who had been silent while the royals discussed bloodlines and high politics, blurted out, “What? Why?”

Loki barely spared them a glance before turning back to Helblindi; he knew which of them had been trained for rule and diplomacy. “That was what started the last war, was it not? Jötunheim attempted to conquer Midgard, using the Casket of Ancient Winters to make it hospitable for Jötun settlers. Restore your kingdom, weaken Asgard, then let me lead a force to conquer Midgard. I will rule it in your name and pay tribute to Jötunheim; I ask only that you allow me the independence to govern it as I see fit.”

Byleistr was still incredulous. “And take no vengeance for our murdered father? Our murdered _king_?”

Loki cast a prayer down to the Norns at the root of Yggdrasil to strengthen the silver tongue they had gifted him, not to let its eloquence tarnish now… but unexpectedly, Helblindi came to his aid.

“We heard the words that passed between them before Prince Loki threw his blade. He avenged himself.”

“He should never have existed in the first place!”

“But he does exist, and he lived to return the Casket to us. The gods give nothing without exacting a price. Our father should have died before he let the Casket be taken; the gods have demanded that he die in order that it be returned.”

“Is that what we’ll tell our people? That _the gods_ killed their king? And just when he happened to be in a room with an Asgardian and the next in line!”

“You’ll tell them the truth,” Loki cut in. “That the king’s cast-off runt returned from Asgard to bring the Casket home and to punish the father who tried to kill him—and who led Jötunheim to defeat. You’ll say it’s a sign from the gods that the ‘children of air and snow’ are no longer to be sacrificed, but will live among you… or in Midgard, as they choose.”

“That’s the truth, is it?” Byleistr scoffed.

“Yes,” Helblindi said calmly. “We have been given the chance to restore Jötunheim to greatness. Would you throw that away for a misplaced sentimentality? Or are you a patriot?”

_‘Misplaced sentimentality’? I take it their relationship with their father was about as good as mine._

Byleistr made a disgusted noise and slammed his hand against the wall—which shattered the ice blade  he had formed around his arm. He was unhappy, but he had disarmed himself. Hvedra did not follow his lead; instead, she seemed to warm her arm and hand from within, melting a layer of the ice and allowing the blade to slide off and break on the ground. They both resumed their seats; Byleistr had to right his first, and kept glancing significantly at Laufey’s glassy-eyed corpse, near-black blood still oozing sluggishly from its throat.

Helblindi turned back toward Loki. “If we are to present you to our people as Laufey’s son—and if you are to lead a force of Jötun warriors—you will need to appear Jötun. But we have only seen partial transformations, when a part of your body is burned with cold.”

“We could have someone follow him around and burn him with cold constantly,” Byleistr growled. Loki wasn’t sure how much was sarcasm and how much genuine malice.

“When I held the Casket, my whole body shifted,” Loki said. “I’ve never tried shifting on my own…” He looked down at his hand and tried to reach inward for whatever the Casket had found in him, the spring of that all-encompassing warmth… but his hand remained stubbornly pink.

“See if you can hold the Casket and not shift back when you let go,” Helblindi suggested.

Loki gave him a sharp look. “I will not turn it over to you until we have addressed your people as agreed. I will present it to you only at an assembly of your people—” He caught himself, paused. “Of _our_ people,” he amended, testing out the sound. “After you tell them that I have come to provide information that will ensure Asgard’s defeat, and to conquer Midgard for Jötunheim.”

Byleistr rolled his eyes and made another disgusted noise; Helblindi only nodded. Loki slid off the chair, less gracefully than he might have hoped; Hvredra made a small sound of alarm and leaned forward, but Helblindi put up a cautioning hand. Loki backed up to the far wall of the room, putting as much distance as possible—little though it was—between himself and the Frost Giants; he had other defenses, but every inch and every second might count. Then he pulled the Casket out of the pocket dimension where he had stored it.

As soon as he grasped its handles, he felt the warmth begin to spread from his hands. Even more remarkable, his vision changed: the ice around him seemed to glow, the dimness of the room to lighten, the features on the Jötnar’s faces to become both softer and more distinct. All three of them gasped; Hvedra glanced around in amazement, Byleistr swore softly, Helblindi closed his eyes as if struggling to keep his composure. None of them moved to take the Casket, but Loki, taking no chances, still dismissed it back to its pocket dimension as soon as he felt the warmth reach every part of his body, from ears to toes.

Some of the glow in the room dimmed again, but Loki found that he could hold onto the warmth in his body; after a few moments of standing very still and counting his breaths, it seemed to settle in. He looked down at his hands: they were still blue. He dared to look up again at the Jötnar; they all seemed shaken and a little forlorn. Loki thought that before his transformation, he would not have been able to identify the brightness of Helblindi’s eyes as unshed tears.

“The Casket should never have been taken from you,” Loki said. He had had a sense of it when standing before it in the Vault, but he had not really felt it until now, had not _known_ it.

“You should not have been taken from us, either,” Helblindi said, to Loki’s great surprise. “Welcome home, brother.”

“Yes, yes,” Byleistr said briskly; he was still impatient, but not nearly as hostile as before. “Now we need to arrange a funeral, an assembly, and a couple of invasions.”

 


	2. Paradise Regained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor is summoned back from Midgard to deal with Loki's rebellion.

Thor was beginning to think he might be happy in Midgard. Not yet, of course; not while the news of his father’s death and his mother’s rejection was still so fresh, not while he could still feel the ache in his muscles from straining to lift Mjölnir, in vain. But someday. He would court Jane slowly, as befit a lady of her standing and education. Selvig, who seemed to stand in place of a father for her (he called himself her “advisor,” which seemed odd considering that she held no political power) had given his implicit permission.

So it came as a complete surprise when Lady Darcy called from the front room of the Midgardians’ strange abode, “Thor? There’s someone here for you… she says she’s your mother?”

Thor’s hesitant spark of hope was instantly smothered. What could she be here for, but to let him feel the full measure of her fury and disappointment?

He emerged from the room where he had been reading one of Jane’s texts of Midgardian physics (a wondrously bizarre way of viewing the world) with his head bowed, bracing himself against the onslaught. But when he dared to raise his eyes, Frigga’s expression seemed wrong; it was worry, not anger, that creased her brow and tightened her lips.

“Mother, I did not expect to see you,” he said cautiously.

“Thor, my son,” she said, her voice thick, and rushed forward to embrace him.

“Mother, I don’t understand… I thought you blamed me for Father’s death, had forbidden me to return…”

Frigga drew back with a look of consternation. “Who told you that?”

“Loki. He came here to see me, two days ago now.”

Frigga shook her head frantically, a hand straying toward her mouth. “No, Thor, your father is still alive, though he did succumb to the Odinsleep after putting it off for so long. But Eir and I have had to wake him before his strength was fully restored.”

“What? Why? Why would Loki lie to me? Mother, what has happened at home?”

Frigga closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she answered, and how had Thor not noticed the redness around her eyes? “Loki is… missing. No one has seen him for two days. Which might not be a cause for alarm, except that…”

“…he was King while Father was Sleeping. And Heimdall has seen nothing?”

“Nothing of Loki, no. He has known for some time that Loki can conceal himself when he wishes, but we assumed it was only some foolish love-affair he wanted to keep secret… But what he _has_ seen is even more troubling. Jötunheim is awake again, showing an energy and rebuilding at a pace that can only mean…”

“…the Casket,” Thor filled in. “Where is it?”

“Not in the Vault. We looked, General Tyr and I, and it seemed to be there. But on a hunch, I shielded my hand and tried to touch it, and it vanished. An illusion.”

Thor’s mind insisted there was only one way to put together the information he was receiving, but his heart refused its verdict. “They must have captured Loki, forced him to call off the Destroyer…”

“Oh, Thor…” Frigga’s voice cracked. “You must speak with your father. Call Mjölnir and we shall go at once.”

“Mjölnir? But I could not lift her…”

“Your father has lifted the banishment. This is too important, and we need you.”

Thor raised his hand and reached out for his weapon… and she answered. After a few moments he realized that he needed to go outside so that the hammer would not come crashing through the glass doors.

Having Mjölnir back in his hand comforted him… but the worry he felt for Loki was too sharp and pressing for even her presence to offer much relief. He bade his Midgardian friends a hurried farewell, thanked them for their help and hospitality, promised to come visit them when he could. Then, with Mjölnir’s aid, he and Frigga flew back to the Bifröst site, she called to Heimdall, and in scarcely an instant they were back in the Observatory… in the place where, barely four days ago, his world had fallen apart.

Horses were waiting for them on the bridge. Thor was still wearing the Midgardian clothing Jane had lent him; after fumbling a bit, he tied Mjölnir to the belt loop of his jeans so that he could mount.

The time they spent traveling passed at once too swiftly to recall and too slowly to bear. At last Frigga led him into the chamber where Odin had Slept. He was still reclining in the great golden bed cushioned with furs, drinking some revitalizing potion from a silver goblet at his bedside.

Thor knelt by his father’s bed and took his hand, feeling the dormant strength beneath the fragile papery skin. “I am sorry, Father. Sorry for my defiance, my arrogance… tell me how I can help my brother.”

There was pity in Odin’s gaze when he said, “I don’t need you to help him. I need you to stop him.”

The words chilled Thor to the spine like the wind in Jötunheim. He carefully withdrew his hands from his father’s, stood and backed away a few steps. “I don’t understand.”

“Thor, we should have told you, we should have told you both,” Frigga said; if his mother were not usually so dignified and composed, he might have called it an outburst.

“Should have told me what.” His fear settled like a block of ice in his stomach, radiating cold through all his limbs.

“Loki is not our son by birth,” Odin said, his voice too calm, too neutral. “I found him as a baby in Jötunheim, at the end of the war. He was born too small, so Laufey—his father—left him to die.”

Thor could not believe what he was hearing. “That’s impossible. Loki is not a Frost Giant. He looks no different than any of us…” He stopped. But Loki did look different from everyone in his family; Thor had even teased him about it—the dark hair, the long nose, the lean build—and jokingly called him an Elven changeling.

“He’s a shapeshifter; it’s a rare trait among Jötnar, but not unheard of. He shifted to an Aesir form as soon as I picked him up, sensing a possible provider. And he stayed that way until… something happened during your idiotic excursion to Jötunheim. He went down to the Vault to try holding the Casket; I saw what he was doing and went to stop him, and he confronted me.” Odin’s eye clouded for a moment, as he drifted into troubling memory. “That was when I fell into the Sleep. He was angry, irrational…”

“How could he not be angry?” Thor interjected.

“He would be dead if not for me!” Odin snapped, and lying there in his nightgown wrapped in furs he seemed more like a querulous old man than he ever had before. "But how did he repay me? He stole the Casket and took it right back to Laufey.”

“Laufey is dead,” Frigga put in, her voice brittle. “Heimdall has seen that too. There was some sort of power struggle with his sons…”

“Maybe Loki betrayed that father, too. Better to have the viper in someone else’s nest...”

“Loki isn’t a viper,” Thor said through gritted teeth.

“Blood will out,” Odin said as if he hadn’t heard, his eye burning into Thor’s. “I should have known. The boy was always a liar and a sneak…”

“Odin!” Frigga cried, anguished. “He’s our son!”

“Not anymore.” Odin’s pronouncement carried the weight of a disowning.

“He’s still my brother,” Thor said with quiet vehemence.

“You can believe that all you want, but you’ll still fight him when he comes with a Jötun army to assail Asgard.”

“He won’t,” Thor insisted.

“You think returning their greatest weapon to them will be the end of it? No, Thor; he has chosen a side and it isn’t ours.”

Odin was half right. When the Jötun army came to Asgard, Loki wasn’t with them. But it was plain that they had an insider’s knowledge of the palace, the city, the land. They destroyed hidden stores of food so that the city would not be able to withstand a siege; they blockaded the entrances to a secret fortress in the mountains so that the people could not take refuge there and raided caches of weapons so that the populace could not take up arms. To their credit, Thor thought, it seemed that they tried to minimize civilian casualties: the aim was to humiliate Asgard’s rulers, not to make enemies of its people.

Odin sent an emissary under a white flag to the camp the Jötnar had established in the mountains, bearing a missive that read, _“Odin All-Father demands that you turn over the traitor Loki Laufeyson.”_ The emissary returned, frightened but unharmed, with a reply, written in large letters on his white flag: _“Odin Father of Lies does not seem to be in a position to demand much of anything. The traitor Loki Laufeyson conveys his warmest regards to Frigga All-Mother and invites her to send a message when she wishes to discuss terms of surrender. She has the word of King Helblindi that she shall not come to harm. Jötunheim has no quarrel with Vanaheim, but remembers ancient alliances before the Realms submitted to Asgard’s tyranny.”_

Odin was furious; Frigga said nothing. He did not even ask whether she planned to take Loki up on his offer. Thor thought that might be a mistake. Once his parents might have thought and acted as one… but Frigga had been quiet and distant since Odin had disowned Loki. Thor realized that it would not surprise him if she acted on her own contrary to Odin’s wishes—not only as Queen of Asgard, jointly responsible for the Realm’s well-being, but as All-Mother of the Nine Realms and a princess of Vanaheim.

As Thor led skirmishes against the Jötnar, he wondered always if he would encounter Loki: he looked for a shorter, slighter figure among the hulking giants; he half expected at every moment to come face to face with his brother, to confront that face he knew better even than his own… but would it be icy blue, now, the crystal-green eyes turned to red? Would he know his brother in such a guise, by anything else but his stature?

He asked Heimdall at every opportunity for news of Loki. He was no longer concealing himself; he was in Jötunheim, contributing his magical skill to its rebuilding with the aid of the Casket. Meanwhile, the Jötun army laid siege to Asgard, and Thor knew that Asgard could not long hold out. Odin stubbornly insisted that he would not yield; Frigga grew ever more quiet and distant. Thor wondered how long it would be before she accepted the invitation to negotiate a surrender.

Four months after the invasion of Asgard, the stalemate was disrupted when Heimdall brought news to the royal family: a Jötun force had invaded the northern reaches of Midgard, near the site of their incursion more than a thousand years before. Loki was at its head.

“I must go,” Thor told his parents, and neither of them disputed it.

He assembled a small force of his most trusted warriors: Hogun, Volstagg, Fandral, and the Lady Sif, along with a handful of the Einherjar he knew best. He asked Heimdall to locate an Agent Philip, son of Coul, who might be able to rally Midgard’s own forces to her defense; Heimdall told him that Coulson and a contingent of Midgardian warriors were already in the region where Loki and his soldiers had arrived.

So Heimdall sent Thor and his chosen companions to the far north of Midgard. In many ways, Thor thought, it was like the desert where he had first landed: barren of vegetation for as far as he could see, with only the stark beauty of mountain crags rising from the empty expanse, the harsh dry air cut through by winds that roared and shrieked like berserkers that scented blood.

The Jötnar were at the edge of the land, where the ice met the sea. Coulson was there with his Midgardian agents, clad in their strange black cloth armor over the bulky layers that protected them from the cold. Two strange warriors were with them, one in a suit of red and gold metal armor that wholly enclosed his body, another in lighter red and blue armor with a silver star on his chest and on his blue-and-red shield.

“Nice to see you again, Dr. Blake… or is it Thor?” Coulson greeted him.

Thor skipped over the pleasantries. “We are here to aid you in defeating the Frost Giants. Tell us what we must do.”

“I think you might have come to the wrong party,” said a muffled voice from the red and gold armor.

“I don’t understand.”

“Thor, allow me to present Mr. Tony Stark,” Coulson said, gesturing to the man in the metal armor. “And Captain Steven Rogers.” The blue-and-red warrior nodded. “And your friends are…?”

“Lady Sif and the Warriors Three: Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you all, but it’s actually looking like defeating won’t be necessary,” Coulson explained with his usual understated equanimity. “Director Fury is waiting for confirmation from the World Security Council and the UN, but it appears we’re going to be able to come to an arrangement.”

“An arrangement with those—” _Monsters,_ he had been about to say. But Loki was one of them; he always had been. “With those invaders?” he finished lamely.

“They describe themselves as immigrants seeking a better life,” said the warrior with the shield, Captain Rogers. His voice was stern, almost accusing.

“Is that what they are?” Volstagg scoffed, and Fandral laughed. Thor held up a hand to silence them.

“They said their homeworld was devastated by war a thousand years ago and deprived of the resources to rebuild. By your world, interestingly enough,” Coulson added mildly. “They’re just now starting to restore their own planet, but it will take some time for their society and economy to recover. Some of them think they’d fare better here.”

“And so they might,” Thor acknowledged. “But what of the Midgardians… the humans who live here now?”

Stark made an exaggerated show of looking around, swiveling his helmeted head while its expression remained frozen. “Are there some I didn’t know about?”

“Not _right here_ ,” Sif interjected impatiently. “In your Realm.”

“The government of Norway seems quite amenable to the arrangement,” Coulson said. “As are the governments of Greenland and Denmark. They’ll have to put it to a vote in their respective parliaments, of course, and maybe even a referendum, but a military response doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.”

“What is the nature of this ‘arrangement’?” Hogun asked, matching Coulson’s imperturbable neutrality.

“As you may be aware, Earth’s climate has been dangerously warming due to unfortunate energy-capture practices…”

“That’s a really euphemistic way of saying ‘human stupidity,’” Stark put in.

“…and the Jötnar have offered us a way to protect the Earth from some of the effects of that warming. Or maybe even reverse it entirely.”

“They want to settle on the glaciers and ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctic,” Captain Rogers explained, seeming annoyed by Coulson’s vagueness. “No one lives there anyway.”

“That is blatant penguin erasure,” said Stark, puzzlingly.

“Don’t forget polar bears,” Coulson added, deadpan as ever.

“No _people_ live on the glaciers and ice sheets. They’ve assured us that they have only peaceful intentions toward the surrounding populations. They’ll trade, of course, but respect human territorial sovereignty.”

The Asgardians exchanged skeptical glances; Volstagg even snorted aloud, and Thor glared at him.

“And in return they’ll use their magic Casket to prevent the ice from melting,” Rogers finished, with a glare of his own.

“It’s not magic, it’s energy transfer,” Stark muttered.

“It’s really a win-win solution for everyone,” Coulson said. “They’ll get an environment that works for them, protect the local ecosystems, and stop sea level rise. Hunting and fishing rights will have to be worked out, but in light of the benefits…”

“I must warn you that the promises of Jötnar are not to be trusted,” Thor said.

“Funny, that’s exactly what they said about you Asgardians,” Coulson replied, neutral as ever.

Sif growled low in her throat; Thor wasn’t sure it was voluntary. “Was there a man among them who was smaller than the rest—about my height?”

“Yes, the one who spoke to us on their behalf was just the size of a tall human. The others seemed not to speak any human languages. I wondered if they choose their ambassadors to avoid intimidating the locals.”

“No,” Thor said sharply. “He is the only one of his size, or one of very few; the Jötnar kill the rest at birth. He grew up in Asgard, so he is the only one who has knowledge of the All-Tongue. That is why he was their spokesman.”

“That and the ‘silver tongue,’” Fandral contributed. “He can be very persuasive.”

“You seem to know this guy pretty well,” said Rogers, sounding suspicious.

“He was raised as my brother.” A knot seemed to form in Thor’s throat even as he said it, and he half-choked on the last word.

“Wow, this is some real George R. R. Martin shit,” Stark commented. He muttered something to himself; Thor thought he made out the word “fucking,” but he couldn’t be sure. Coulson gave Stark a reproving look.

“If you have a way to send him a message… would you tell him that his brother wishes to speak with him? That I have no desire to fight him, only to talk.”

“Of course, we can do that,” Coulson replied graciously.

“And I thought I’d been to some awkward family reunions,” said Stark.

Thor and his companions made camp on the glacier. They ate from the travel rations they had packed because there was no hunting or forage to speak of. The sun scarcely seemed to dip below the horizon for an hour, and it never truly grew dark. Thor’s friends seemed to be able to sleep, shielded from the unrelenting light by the thick fabric of their tent, but Thor could not.

He left Volstagg’s snoring and Sif’s quiet nonsensical muttering and sat alone on a fur blanket on the snow-covered ice, watching the sky slowly change from light blue tinged with pink at the horizon to a deepening lilac. As the sky darkened, a ribbon of acid-green light became visible, like a great serpent wrapped around the Earth. Thor remembered this from his visits to Midgard in his youth: the Northern Lights. He remembered asking Loki if he had cast some sort of illusion, and Loki had shaken his head, his mouth slightly open in awe, and said, “No, it’s just the sky.”

The sun was well above the horizon again when his friends emerged from the tent and began busying themselves with rebuilding the fire. None of them asked Thor whether he had slept at all, for which he was grateful. After a light breakfast of toasted waybread and slices of cured meat, they quenched the fire with snow and headed toward the cluster of black tents where Coulson’s comrades—the “agents of Shield,” he had called them—had made camp.

They met Coulson and a few of his black-clad agents partway between their two camps. “Loki has agreed to meet with you,” Coulson said. “I’ll escort you to the Jötun encampment.”

“Just ‘Loki’?” Volstagg asked, sarcastic. “Not ‘King Loki’? ‘Emperor Loki’?”

Coulson frowned at him. “He didn’t specify a title. He did specify that he wanted to talk to Thor only, without his… ‘lackeys’ was the word he used.”

“Do you think we’re stupid enough to leave our prince alone with that snake?” Sif demanded.

Coulson raised his eyebrows. “They won’t be alone. I have two of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents monitoring the Jötnar constantly, and I’ll stay nearby, along with Agents Triplett and Mackenzie.” He gestured to the imposing men who flanked him. The larger one nodded in greeting; the slimmer one smiled and gave a little wave.

“I’ll be fine, Sif,” Thor said. “Loki will not harm me.” He wished he believed that, aside from the presence of the human warriors. Not that they could truly stop Loki and his Jötun soldiers if he wanted to hurt Thor; but Loki was playing some longer game, and would not wish to endanger his truce with the humans.

Thor followed Coulson and his agents toward the coast, where the glacier seemed to pour between gray stone cliffs, stopping just short of the sea. The Jötnar had made crude shelters of ice—though perhaps they did not need much in the way of shelter—and laid down furs in the lees they formed from the wind. Some had been sitting on these furs, talking or perhaps playing games with rune-stones, but stood when they saw Thor approaching with Coulson.

Loki was impossible to miss. He was flanked by two giants of normal height, but stood between them as proudly is if he were half again their height rather than scarcely half of it. Thor’s fear that he would be unable to recognize Loki by anything but his height turned out not to be entirely justified: though his features were hard to make out when carved from lapis rather than marble, Thor recognized his posture and the cut of his hair, which he had not shaved in the custom of his Jötun compatriots, but had adorned with a simple circlet of the pale jade that the Jötnar favored for jewelry and armor. Nor did he, who in Asgard had always covered himself from neck to wrist, wear the loincloth customary among Frost Giants; instead he wore a tunic of soft gray hide that came to his knees, with a collar high on his chest and a belt around his waist ornately carved of the same jade.

“Prince Thor of Asgard,” Loki greeted him, very formally; then, turning to his escort, “Agent Coulson.” His careful, correct tone never changed, nor did his calculating scarlet gaze.

“Prince Loki,” Coulson replied, just as polite. “How have you been getting along with Agents Barton and Romanoff?” At that, a red-haired Midgardian woman in black looked up from where she was sitting, playing at rune-stones with one of the Jötnar, and waved.

“They have been fine guests,” Loki said. “Agent Romanoff has quite taken to our games of strategy. Barton is less proficient, but has been learning to throw blades made of ice.”

Thor, finding this ritual small talk maddening, bulled his way through it. “Loki, brother, why have you done this?”

Loki turned that cold gaze back on him, and did something flicker beneath the ice, or was it only contempt? “Done what, precisely?”

“All of it!”

Loki’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared, and Thor could see his moody, condescending brother beneath the veneer of diplomatic calm. “All of it? Well, I took the Casket from Odin because he had no right to it; I returned it to Jötunheim because the realm was dying without it. I killed Laufey because he tried to kill me and showed no remorse. I waged war against Asgard because it has waged unjust war against all of the realms in its dominion. I came here because… because Jötunheim still has no place for those like me. I will make a home here for those who have no place in Jötunheim—those born small; those dispossessed by the war, or left homeless by the latest attack from Asgard. _Our_ attack.” He stopped; his voice had been rising, his breath quickening, and he needed to collect himself. Loki could never let himself be seen losing control of his emotions.

“Your home is in Asgard, not here—not this frozen wasteland, in this backward realm.”

Loki flicked his eyes over to Coulson, who had backed away to stand at a polite distance, and murmured, “Don’t let our good host hear you. And yes, it is all that, but… a little corner of it can be mine, to shape and cultivate as I wish. There is nothing for me in Asgard.”

“That is not true, Loki. You have a family that loves you.”

Loki raised his eyebrows in a show of cool skepticism; Thor was unsure whether the disgusted twist of his mouth was voluntary. “Yes, I’m sure Odin All-Father’s demand to ‘turn over the traitor Loki Laufeyson’ was only so that he could show me how much he loves me, name change notwithstanding.”

Thor flinched, but refused to be put off so easily. “He is very angry with you, but that does not mean he no longer loves you.”

“No, indeed. ‘No longer’ presupposes that he once loved me.”

“Of course he did, and does,” Thor protested, but Odin’s brittle voice echoed in his head: _“Blood will out. The boy was always a liar and a sneak.”_ “He was angry enough to cast me out—you saw it—but he has welcomed me back.”

“Yes, because he needed his true son to vanquish the false one… and because you suddenly seemed a model of loyal obedience once he saw what real rebellion was.”

Thor shook his head; this was going nowhere. “Loki, please, come home. Mother has not been herself…”

“Then perhaps she should have come to treat with me, as invited. But instead Odin sent you—I think not as a peace envoy.”

“No, but… Loki, I do not wish to fight. You are my brother; nothing can change that. I want my brother at my side again.”

“Ah, there we are. After all the deflection—‘Mother’ this, ‘Father’ that—at last you speak for yourself.”

Thor’s anger flared at that—but part of what fueled his anger was the knowledge that Loki was right. So he quashed it and said, “I speak only for myself when I say: you have a brother who loves you.”

At last a hint of softness came into those strange yet wholly familiar red eyes. But they quickly hardened again and Loki said with a bitter laugh, “Of course you’d only get around to showing it when you saw there was a real chance you wouldn’t have me at your back anymore. That’s quite the improvement from ‘Some do battle, others just do tricks’ and ‘Know your place, brother.’”

Shame burned in Thor’s gut to hear his own words thrown back at him. “I’m no longer the reckless, arrogant boy who took all his blessings for granted. I’ve changed.”

Loki laughed, ironic and pitying. “And so have I. I’ve learned a great deal about myself, not least of which is this: I’d rather reign in Hel than serve in Valhalla.”

 


End file.
